Improvements in medical care in the hospital or similar environment have resulted in an ever increasing number of patient monitoring devices being used. For example, a patient may have one or more blood pressure sensors, one or more pulse sensors, a thermometer, etc. Normally, such sensors or transducer elements are, in known manner, either mounted at a location close to the patient, attached to the patient or implanted within the patient. Those transducer elements most often provide electrical signals that are carried by cables to one or more monitor devices located either in the patient's room, or at a remote location.
In the process of running the various signal-carrying cables from the respective sensors to the monitor unit device, the cables may be secured to the bed frame, to an IV pole, to hooks extending from the IV pole, and often those cables are bound together with ties or tape. Further, the cables then may be run across an area of the floor to the location of the monitor. With so many cables extending over such a wide area, there is an increased probability that the cables may interfere or be damaged by normal activities associated with the patient. For example, the cables may catch on clothing and otherwise interfere with the activities of the patient or the care giver. In other situations, the cables may present a trip hazard. Further, the cables may be caught up in cleaning equipment or other tools used in the physical maintenance of the room, thereby exposing the cables themselves to damage.
The problem of cable management in the medical care environment is addressed in the European patent publication No. 466 272 A1 in which a plurality of cables carrying electric signals from various sensors are terminated through electrical connectors into a junction box, which, itself, is rigidly mounted to a pole clamp. The signals from the plurality of sensors are consolidated in the junction box into a single output connector and then into one end of a single common cable. At the other end of the common cable, wires are separated from the common cable and connected to their respective monitors. While such a cable system is a significant improvement over running individual cables from the sensors to the monitors, the above described cable system does have several significant disadvantages. For example, often, the least reliable component in an electrical system is any type of mechanical contact required to maintain electrical conductivity. Such mechanical contacts are manifested by the pins and sockets associated with electrical connectors. In a medical care environment, the reliability of mechanical contact between the pins and sockets to maintain electrical conductivity is further reduced by the presence of liquids, both conductive and corrosive. Those liquids can contaminate the mating surfaces between the pins and sockets and interfere with the electrical conductivity through a connector, thereby causing a distortion or interruption of the signal passing through the connector. Consequently, to optimize the reliability of the system, it is desirable to minimize the number of electrical connectors.
Electrical connectors have further disadvantages in that they increase costs, and their physical size is substantially greater than the interconnecting wires they conduct, thereby substantially increasing the size of the device through which the interconnecting wires are to be run. In a medical care environment, larger components consume valuable space, are more difficult to handle, and generally impede the mobility of the device.
With current practices, often, once a patient begins a monitoring process, that monitoring continues with the same devices until monitoring is no longer required. The junction box of the prior art device is rigidly connected to a pole clamp; and therefore, in order to move the junction box from one location to another, the pole must be moved also, or the pole clamp removed from the pole. Often pole clamps are very tightly applied to the poles, and it is not only physically difficult, but time consuming to loosen a screw clamp to provide adequate clearance for the clamp to be removed from the pole. Such time delays are often a hindrance when the patient must be quickly moved from one location to another.